Of Joining The Rat Race

My F3, Ahmad Zakri Salleh has followed the footsteps of those before him in Dorm 21 – this smelly and rather mundane dorm has a track record lately of producing accountants, in fact in much higher proportion compared to other dorms. Zack recently qualified as a Chartered Accountant with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Australia (ICAA) after a stint at PwC, and is now attached to Petronas.

3 of my F5s in 1992 (the ones that I can confirm) turned out to be accountants – Epit Kassim did his ACCA a couple of years back, Amar graduated from Australia in Accounting, whilst Nazerk is lecturing in accountancy at MMU. Out of 6 Form 5s in my batch in 1994, four became accountants. I abandoned engineering for accountancy at the end of my university degree, Auzir went straight to Australia to do his accounting degree and post graduate studies (currently attached to BDO), Ayien was under accounting scholarship from TNB which he continued to serve till this day. Champ did his ACCA. Only Aslam and Mior continued with a profession or studies in engineering.

I was quite looking forward to seeing Zack after all these years – he was one of the nicer ones of my F3s who did not really work up my nerve. There were 2 other of his batchmates, Kamarul (who did ACCA in Ireland) and a F5 baru who was too quiet I couldn’t remember his name (excuse ma!).

Although we were only separated at most by a mere 24-month in age, I was quite surprised at the gap between our respective worldview and perspective of life. Here was I sitting down with young executives, fresh in joining the rat race and eager to make it big – as opposed to myself and Allen who are quite laid back about the whole thing. Sometimes I wonder whether my circle of friends are relatively not as ambitious as our peers each time I meet other people, or being outside KL makes me insulated from the ups and downs of the yuppie life and the rat race.

Names were dropped here and there about this guy and that guy from this batch and that batch doing very well. I exchanged understanding and cynical glance with Allen, both cynically moaning the dead end job we are stuck with (but somehow we are quite happy with it).

All in all it was a good time spent to catch with some of my juniors, who were not really close to me when I was in koleq. Not surprisingly, Zack still looks very much like the TV3 mascot in the mid-90s!